This page has been validated.
228
MEXICO — PROGRESSIVE
traditions of an ancient and severely tried people, while it will promote a commercial communion certain to be mutually advantageous. Such a policy will hasten a commercial treaty just to both countries. The noble sentiment which should animate the nation of Washington, Lincoln, and Grant ought moreover to emphasize the approval of such a treaty by an act of grace, — the restoration of the flags and cannon captured by us in 1847. Nations not familiar with the precepts of Christianity were wont to make their war trophies, not of marble or metal, but of wood, that they might the more speedily perish. Why should we perpetuate the story of the defeat and humiliation of our sister republic?
